Microbial infections pose a serious health risk, particularly for those undergoing medical procedures, such as surgery. Typically, infection prevention may be achieved by the topical application of disinfectants, antiseptics and antibacterials to surfaces likely to be contacted by infectious agents. However, many of these compounds are harmful to mammalian tissue, only have a short-term effect and need to be reapplied constantly for infection prevention. Those patients that do contract a microbial infection may be able to treat the infection with an antibiotic. However, the antibiotic may not be effective and, even if the patient may be treated with an antibiotic, the infection alone can still cause serious harm to the patient.
A patient may be particularly susceptible to infection during surgery or when a medical device is implanted in the patient since there is two-fold exposure from the surgery itself as well as the medical device. There remains a need decrease the instances of infection by treating the surface material of the medical devices to help prevent infections.
Silicones are an increasingly important polymer for both medical and non-medical applications. For medical devices in particular, silicones may be used for seals, gaskets, valves, masks, catheters, tubing, breast implants among other devices. With the growing popularity for silicones in use with medical devices, there is also a growing need to make silicones more resistant as a source for infection.
There exists a need in the art for a compositions, methods and techniques to create surface modifications to polysiloxanes (e.g., polydimethyl siloxanes such as silicones) and to attach anti-microbial (e.g., anti-infective) agents to the surface of polysiloxanes (e.g., silicones).